October 23, 2014

It all started in September, when Houston Mayor Annise Parker and City Attorney David Feldman issued an "overly broad" subpoena for the sermons of select ministers who opposed the city's equal rights ordinance. Because of intense national opposition from even Texas' attorney general, this past Wednesday, Parker and Feldman appeared to recant or at least reduce their flagrant overreach and disregard of the ministers' legal protections under the First Amendment.

By the weekend, however, the truth came out that they were only using political smoke and mirrors to try to simmer the patriotic fury; they were not changing course to constitutional compliance.

This is a great sentence.

It is very difficult to apply mirrors or smoke to the simmering process, in practice, I should imagine. Smoke may of course be employed in regards to barbecue, but I don't quite grasp how it might simmer anything, absent a Rube-Goldbergian apparatus. Likewise with mirrors. This is not even to broach the question of why the presumed malefactors in this scenario would even want to maintain furiously patriotic simmering. Maybe this is all to do with arcane Texas cuisine lingo to which I am not privy. Or else perhaps Chuck Norris is dumb. Who knows.

Chuck?

I'm a Texan, and it chaps my hide when some kibosh of the U.S. Constitution originates in the Lone Star State.

You're a Texan, and your mangled understanding of "kibosh" makes me extremely reluctant to inquire as to what you might mean by "chaps my hide."

What this all actually means is that authoritarian religious assholes want to (1) directly engage in electoral politics, and (2) not pay taxes.

It's not a mystery why your more savvy right-wing operatives would want to fling this bullshit. It's also obvious why Chuck Norris would also gleefully wallow in these poop-pools:

December 01, 2013

This is a thing that has a far more Internetty and mass-media hysterical existence than an actual true-fact existence.

You are as likely to be a victim of The Knockout Game as you are to be the lucky winner of a state lottery.

"Wilding" didn't exist either.

And so... Here is America's Most Tremulous Old White Man, Jay Nordlinger!

I am not one of those who want the president and other major politicians to comment on everything that takes place in America. On the whole, I think that there could be more reticence from the highest offices.

But how long has this “knockout” thing been going on? I’m talking about these racial attacks across the country, wherein thugs pick little old ladies to bludgeon. These are mainly “black on white” attacks, as I understand it. If they were “white on black,” wouldn’t we be having a national emergency?Wouldn’t politicians, journalists, and others be talking about it to the exclusion of nearly everything else?

This is one of those things that are impolite to mention but screamingly true. I’m not sure that President Obama or others can do any good when it comes to this evil “game.” I also don’t believe that Obama has a special obligation to address racial problems (although he was happy to comment on the Cambridge, Mass., police and the Trayvon Martin case, wasn’t he?). But if he or others can do any good — they should.

P.S. When people speak of “hate crimes,” isn’t this what they mean, or should mean? Although, in my book, a crime is a crime — no need for the special category of “hate.”

Jesus Fuck.

Christ, Nordlinger. Grow a pair.

This, though, is rich, so I re-quote:

These are mainly “black on white” attacks, as I understand it. If they were “white on black,” wouldn’t we be having a national emergency? Wouldn’t politicians, journalists, and others be talking about it to the exclusion of nearly everything else?

HOLY SHIT, NORDLINGER, THIS IS A MADE-UP PHONY-BALONEY LOAD OF HORSESHIT FROM THE GET-GO.

If the fucking National Review were to encourage roaming gangs of whites to go looking to Enact Justice upon random blacks, nobody would be surprised.

These pictures were taken at the Otsego County Fair in Morris, New York.

Morris, a town of 1,878 people, is about 90 miles west of Albany.

For those unfamiliar with upstate New York, it is far more conservative than the perilously liberal New York City.

Readers may be aware that this isn't the first time Obama's likeness has been disgracefully used this way.

Three years ago, a carnival in Roseto, Pennsylvania, had a game where constestants [Freudian sic?] shot darts at an image of a suited black man holding a healthcare bill and wearing a presidential seal.

After some complaints, the exhibit was changed to a pirate theme.

Alright, he typed "disgracefully" once (as well as "perilously liberal New York City") but his real function is providing space for commenters to work out their individual issues. And issues they have:

Uh-oh. Here come the "racist" shouts. And 5, 4, 3, ...

How'd he guess?

You could also use his photo to line a bird cage, or put down on the floor to potty train a puppy..............I've heard of Obama toilet paper (I think Dave might have some), but I wouldn't disrespect my own arse by getting a likeness of the purple-lipped petulant punk near it!!!!

See, this is where one of those “assault weapons” might have come in handy.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “When some politician starts pontificating
that no one needs more than a 10 round clip capacity (or 5, or 3) this
is the story that should be shoved in their faces. She fired 6 shots,
put 5 in the attacker and he was still kicking. What if there had been
multiple attackers. Then that 30 round clip suddenly seems appropriate.”

Well, since she could have purchased one those great big bang-bang-sticks, and didn't, relying on a measly little .38, she was just basically asking for whatever the crowbar-carrying attacker had in mind for her, I suppose.

But why stop at quote-unquote "assault rifles"? After all, as another of Reynolds' inestimable correspondents points out,

I also read on another blog the comments by a western rancher who
explained that he always carries a .223 semi-auto rifle when working his
own property. Why? Because of wolves. Six charged him one day and it
took far more than 10 rounds from his “assault” rifle to drop two of
them, after which the other four fled.

What if this woman had not simply faced one intruder with a crowbar, but multiple attackers who were armed with wolves?

More responsible "politicians" would subsidize each of these thoroughly necessary items of domestic defense, instead of leaving the suburban-propertied-classes helpless before the wolf-lugging hordes. Likewise, the Airforce needs to be privatized, so that for a nominal annual fee, in a pinch, homeowners can at least call in a drone strike.

And if anecdotal evidence such as that he cites here proves insufficient to prove his case that all homeowners truly ought to possess firepower of the sort capable of efficiently shooting up elementary schools, the free market provides a solution. People like Reynolds should be permitted to rent out invaders of the variety referenced in the news story above (and I know you know what I mean), so they might finally live out what is obviously their most devoutly-wished personal fantasy.

At a minimum they ought to be able to blow up farm-raised wolves with rocket launchers. I mean, do we or do we not live in a civilized, 21st century nation?

The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was
my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a
liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the
right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered
hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical
context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.

Woof woof!

However.

Before we all go merrily on together, munching the kibbles (or drawing "final lines"):

The best way to get Republicans to read a book about reaching out for
the black vote, I thought, was to detail the Democratic Party’s long
history of maltreatment of blacks. After all, the party was based in the
South for 100 years after the war, and all of the ugly racism we
associate with that region was enacted and enforced by Democratic
politicians. I was surprised that such a book didn’t already exist.

This is appallingly stupid.

I thought knowing the Democratic Party’s pre-1964 history of racism,
which is indisputable, would give Republicans a story to tell when they
went before black groups to solicit votes. I thought it would also make
Republicans more sympathetic to the problems of the black community,
many of which are historical in their origins. Analyses by economists
and sociologists show that historical racism still holds back
African-Americans even though it has diminished radically since the
1960s.

Holy shit.

So I wrote Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past. Unfortunately, it was published the day Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses.

Yeah, well, Obama winning isn't why that book is embarrassing.

It is the assumption that "black groups," and also "people with access to consensus reality," are absolute morons, that is the problem there.

If you don't know why the GOP now wins the South, bless you, have a biscuit.

Some dogs can learn English, apparently. But they'll still eat their own shit.

MUCHO MAS. Just to say, while it is all very swell that Bruce Bartlett, David Frum, and Andrew Sullivan have courageously declared themselves non-wingnuts, that hardly qualifies them as people who aren't boring idiots generally. "Finally, after much inner struggle, I realized that the Rush Limbaugh view of the world has its flaws" is not, in the final analysis, a very impressive intellectual manifesto. Here is Sullivan:

I endured the same kind of thing, although I was much less polite than
Bruce and had an independent platform. But it's still remarkable to me
that I have not been invited on Fox for a decade - even to discuss or
debate my book on, er, conservatism and fundamentalism. My book, The Conservative Soul, was not reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, and given a formal excommunication/evisceration by National Review's Jonah Goldberg.

Jesus fucking Christ. Reading these people is like watching the lost footage of Ingmar Bergman's version of The Terror of Tiny Town.

It’s wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In fact,
America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from
their initial mistakes and embrace freedom. One of the earliest and
arguably most historically significant North American colonies was
Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620 in what is now known as Plymouth,
Massachusetts. As I’ve outlined in greater detail here before (Lessons From a Capitalist Thanksgiving),
the original colony had written into its charter a system of communal
property and labor. As William Bradford recorded in his Of Plymouth Plantation, a people who had formerly been known for their virtue and hard work became lazy and unproductive. Resources were squandered, vegetables were
allowed to rot on the ground and mass starvation was the result. And
where there is starvation, there is plague. After 2 1/2 years, the
leaders of the colony decided to abandon their socialist mandate and
create a system which honored private property. The colony survived and
thrived and the abundance which resulted was what was celebrated at that
iconic Thanksgiving feast.

November 09, 2012

"As the brainwashed American public & the evil Hollywood producers who wash their brains have no interest in any of my art (For I am an artist.) please give me & my fellow conservative artists money, preferably in the form of a tax-free grant or award (For infrastructure!) so we'll be able to reverse liberal influence in the culture & restore the free market by making movies about what swell dudes businessmen are."

September 21, 2012

Poll shows Jewish support for Obama in Florida down 7 percentage points from 2008

... ever stop getting wanked over by clots like this, who console themselves with happy thoughts about how Orthodox Jews are way into fucking.

Not sure why the right thinks that the American public really wants to see an even more hardcore aggressive Israel that leads the US president by the nose. But then again this is the American right, so we're talking dogma, not sense.

Rep. Todd Akin has, unwittingly to be sure, harmed the pro-life movement, his senatorial race in Missouri, the Republican Party, and therefore quite possibly the nation.

"Quite possibly the nation!" How so, one axes?

While he should not have used the term "legitimate rape," he could have explained later that, given the expanded definitions of rape, not all claims of "rape" are truly rape. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for Feminist Perspectives on Rape states, for example, that "we must recognize that, in some cases, 'yes' also means no ... The man may threaten to sue for custody of their children, to derail her green card application, to evict her, or simply to sulk and make her life miserable for days should she refuse to have sex. Which (if any) of such nonviolent coercive pressures should be regarded as rape, either morally or legally, is a matter of some controversy."

That would have largely ended the issue.

Indeed. Just who exactly occupies the moral high ground would have then been totally clear, Mr. Already-Kinda-Rapey.

The far greater problem was Congressman Akin's other comment: "From what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy is] really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

As one wit put it about such a comment: that was worse than wrong, it was stupid.

Unless -- and this would be upsetting -- he, and the movement, don't think this comment was stupid.

Pregnancy from rape is rare because a "woman's body shuts down"?

Who told Akin this? And why would he believe it, even if some doctor did tell him this?

Here is my theory.

This is, of course, where The Fun Begins.

I have spent a good part of my life showing what an intellectual bubble the left lives in. That is why so many could believe that boys don't really prefer trains to tea sets or girls dolls to army soldiers. Those who believe such nonsense usually live in an intellectual bubble. They are raised by liberal parents, taught by left-wing teachers from high school through graduate school, watch left-wing MTV and news, listen to liberal NPR, go to movies produced by leftists, etc. Their whole world is left-wing. They don't watch, listen to, study under, or socialize with conservatives.

Bubbles tend to produce nonsense. When the only people you talk to, read, and socialize with agree with you, it is easy to abandon critical thinking.

And when you are morally right -- and those who argue for a right to life of unborn human beings (or human fetuses, if you prefer) are morally and even scientifically right -- a bubble can make critical thought even more difficult.

I wonder if that is not the case with Rep. Akin's comment.

Yeah, maybe.

Also maybe more liberals might want to "study under you" if you were more self-aware and less, well, rapey.

Or, say, if you more clearly "knew things."

Prager then goes on to explain how if he were at a dinner party with Akin he would have totally explained to him exactly how rape works, which might explain why fewer and fewer liberals invite him to dinner parties. ("I would have respectfully asked the congressman whether he was aware of the marauding armies throughout history that raped women. Did he assume that very few of them -- like the German women raped by Soviet soldiers at the end of World War II -- got pregnant? Did he not know how many raped slaves gave birth? Was he not aware of the tragedy of the women of Darfur who, after being raped by Sudanese Arab soldiers, are abandoned by their families for getting pregnant out-of-wedlock? Oooh, pass those yummy canapes.")

Anyhow.

It's more than clear what Prager is up to, and why Establishment Wingnuttia wants Akin dead, his family burned to the ground.